Chapter 25
It takes me ages to settle enough to even try to sleep. I pace the floor, replaying everything in my mind, cursing the rug that keeps catching my toes and tripping me. My thoughts are like the blizzard outside, spinning in all directions at once.
Eventually I go into the en suite. In the mirror I bear no resemblance to the smiling girl who began the night feeling pretty.
Ruthlessly I scrub the make-up from my face, tug out the hairpins and scatter them on the sink.
I shed the borrowed dress in a puddle of silk and step into the shower.
The blast of hot water and furious scouring of my skin does little to soothe my spirits or dispel the horrific thoughts that bounce around my brain.
I pull on my pyjamas and a robe, and pace some more.
Eventually I get into bed and pull up the covers but I’m no closer to sleep.
A headache pounds at the base of my skull.
I force myself to consider the facts, trying to separate them from theories and my own panic.
It’s not easy – almost everything about that night is conjecture, based on people’s impressions and recollections. Any evidence is circumstantial at best.
But I know better than most that circumstantial evidence is sometimes all it takes.
Plus, this isn’t just about whether someone cares enough to try and prove I killed Genevieve; it’s about being able to look myself in the eye; it’s about knowing who I am, what I’m capable of.
There’s nothing so disconcerting as being faced with a reflection of yourself you don’t recognise.
I know that in rare – extreme – cases, it’s possible for the brain to cushion itself against an event so shocking it simply can’t be faced; but somehow, in the absence of my textbooks I turn to a layperson’s definition to prove to myself it’s plausible.
I can’t sleep so I slip out of bed and into Becca’s parents’ office where I make use of the shiny laptop on the desk.
I go down a rabbit hole, delving desperate to disprove a theory I already know is possible.
Extract from website:
Comments and questions section:
User56: Is it actually possible to commit a crime and genuinely forget what you did?
Misbehavingmind: Yes, the mind can go to extraordinary extremes to protect itself.
Traumatic memories can trigger this preservation mechanism.
So it’s possible to experience or even do something terrible and completely erase the memory of the event, if the circumstances are sufficiently shocking and painful.
User56: But how does that work?
Misbehavingmind: The brain is easily overwhelmed by reliving trauma. The memories become literally too much for the fragile mind to take, so your brain ‘hides’ them.
User56: Forever?
Misbehavingmind: Not necessarily. The memories are stored differently, but they’re still there and they could surface at any time.
It should be noted that much more research is required before scientists fully understand the process that leads the brain to code these memories differently.
If you’re worried about your mental health, or the health of a loved one, check out the resources page of the website for signposting to support.
I know it’s entirely possible for the brain to hide painful memories. Dissociative amnesia is real.
I print some pages of ‘research’ and spread them on the desk to consider the evidence.
I can’t remember portions of that night, and what I do remember is patchy.
I was on the beach, at the water’s edge when Leo spotted Gen in the sea. My clothes were wet, and I can’t explain why. I fabricated a memory of falling asleep in the dunes and only coming to when Leo raised the alarm, which suggests there was something I was trying to escape from …
I fled the moment I finished being interviewed by police, turned my back on my friends and St Andrews. I haven’t spoken to them or been back since.
I didn’t attend Gen’s funeral. I had a complete breakdown that summer and couldn’t face it.
I’ve blanked a lot about Gen from my mind – including, apparently, the fact that she drugged and set-up my boyfriend with the intention of ruining our relationship and, if the others are to be believed, controlled and manipulated me throughout our friendship, throwing every good memory of her into question.
Unsurprisingly, I’m not feeling any better so I sneak back to my room, grope my way to bed in the dark. I don’t want to switch on the light; I need darkness and hopefully sleep.
But as soon as I close my eyes, rage displaces the fear.
Reaching blindly in the darkness, I snatch up Gen’s book from my bedside table.
I want to tear it in two with my bare hands.
How could she do that to me? Maybe she’d suffered some damage in her life and was incapable of being a true friend.
Possibly some sort of personality disorder …
I can’t help but try to diagnose, but it doesn’t help with the sense of betrayal.
The anger is intense even after all these years. Could I have been angry enough that night to … kill her?
If a fire still burned in the grate, I’d hurl the book into the flames, but the coals are long cold. The anger is disturbing but wanting to destroy something that belonged to someone who betrayed you is not the same as wanting to destroy them …
I fling the book into the void of dark, and it bounces, lands on the floor somewhere, possibly behind my suitcase.
My hands are shaking. I’m shivering, questioning everything I’ve ever believed about myself – my morals, my inclination to help, to do no harm.
Did I choose my profession not because of my fascination for the disordered brains of others, but based on a need to know and understand me?
A desperate attempt to prove myself worthy, a good person … Despite what I’d done.
I force myself to think about my mother’s accident – that guilt is surely the origin of my trauma – recalling the sheer panic that consumed me when I saw her boat upturned.
How loudly and desperately I screamed into an abyss of sky and heather and moor.
The landscape empty, with no one to hear or come to my aid.
How I dived in and kept diving, surfacing only to snatch a breath, searching for hours.
If not for that passerby, a lucky rare car passing along the remote road, I’d have tired, slipped under and drowned too.
I remember the shock setting in, how it numbed and blurred the edges of my pain.
How, after it faded, I threw up walls in my mind to block the agony, the guilt, the questions:
Did she call out to me from the water? Did I sleep through her shouts for help?
The questions were too loud. So I found a way to muffle them.
I should have got help. Dad tried to suggest counselling …
the doctor at the hospital they took me to when I was suffering from shock and borderline hypothermia, said I should consider therapy when I was ready.
But I thought I knew best … thought I could block out the darkness with nothing but my own willpower.
And what if I couldn’t … didn’t? What if my mind fractured that day and I lost my sense of myself, my humanity.
Grief, particularly sudden and traumatic death, can do that to a person.
I poured everything into Genevieve once I got to St Andrews: all my hope for a brighter future. Suppose finding out what Gen had done to me was too much for my fragile mind to cope with? Perhaps I’d grown to resent her control and was already poised that night, ready to snap.
If I drowned her, it’s feasible that my mind would conjure up an alternative story to protect me from the horror of my actions. The cognitive dissonance would have been too much for me to cope with.
With these thoughts tormenting me, I can’t imagine ever falling asleep, but at some point I succumb. I’m aware that I’m dreaming and that the dreams are vivid. In this state of tortured fatigue I can’t quite wake myself up, even when the dreams grow frightening.
I dream I’m running from room to room at Tarnmore, searching for something and growing increasingly frantic …
I dream I’m out in the snow, disorientated and filled with rising terror—
Chasing or being chased, I can’t tell.
In my dream I’ve lost the only thing that really matters.
My faith in myself.
*
Thursday
The power is out again when I wake. The house feels arctic, like the heating system has been down for hours.
My phone is dead, the battery drained – fat lot of use it is anyway; I still haven’t connected it to the Wi-Fi.
I should have done that last night, when I snuck into Becca’s father’s study to use his computer, but I didn’t think about it.
I was too distracted. Still, at least I know the internet was working – I managed to print those pages.
Pages I might need to destroy – they’re further evidence against me. Too late, I think about the trail I’ve left in the search history. I should have cleared the cache, not that it would make that much difference, if someone were determined to track what I’d been doing.
I sit up groggily in bed. There’s so much to think about, so much to do. If the snow would only cease for a bit, I could call Mitch and have him come get me …
But how can I just go back to my ordinary life knowing what I know?
Or not knowing, more to the point.
I’ll need to use the landline to ring him, since my phone is dead.
Mitch might not be able to drive up the track – it could take days to clear – but he’ll have a better idea of the state of the roads and how close he can get to Tarnmore.
There’ll be ploughs out as soon as they can make headway; they’ll focus on the main trunk roads.
I can hike down the track, meet him on the Peebles Road.
And then what? Forget that my whole friendship with Genevieve was fiction … forget that my so-called friends think I murdered her?
That they might not be wrong …?
Some genies can’t be coaxed back into the bottle. I was an idiot coming here, thinking I could reclaim my past.